The Memphis Flyer was founded on February 16, 1989, by Contemporary Media, Inc., publisher of Memphis magazine. With more than 222,000 regular readers, the Memphis Flyer is an urban newsweekly with a blend of hard news and features, and columns...

The son of Alabama sharecroppers and grandson of a slave, Jesse Owens won a record four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Five months later, he was racing a gelding for money on a dirt track in Cuba.

The fresh air that rushes in now is the conviction that personal responsibility is not antithetical to collective obligation -- realized ultimately in government -- and that personal reward comes not from getting mine but from creating ours.

Jubilant crowds across the nation celebrated the historic moment, which brought eight years of the Republican rule of George W. Bush to an end. "A new dawn of American leadership is at hand," Obama said.

As the country struggles with a confidence-shaking economic meltdown, unfinished and bloody business in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soaring energy costs, we can only hope that the candidates will move past the current ugliness and get back to the real issues soon. Now that would be a real October surprise.

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Well, it's finally happening; as the headline of my piece in February, "Gadfly: Aux Barricades, Wisconsin!", foreshadowed, the barricades are finally being stormed, and, this time not just in Madison, Wisconsin. It's beginning to look like “American Spring” may have finally arrived!

Well, it's finally happening; as the headline of my piece in February, "Gadfly: Aux Barricades, Wisconsin!", foreshadowed, the barricades are finally being stormed, and, this time not just in Madison, Wisconsin. It's beginning to look like “American Spring” may have finally arrived!

The most attention-getting circumstances were undoubtedly the unexpected announcement by Sheriff Mark Luttrell that he would be running for Shelby County mayor and the weekend kickoff of former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton's 9th District congressional campaign.

The legislative week that ended on June 4th was intended to be the penultimate one of the current session of the Tennessee General Assembly. But uncertainty over budgetary matters prevails, and, for the 132 men and women of the legislature, the uncertainty may prolong the agony.